Tarquelne

Yay.

You're allow to shoot anyone... anyone other than me, who says anything about "Please fix or do somefink."

I can compare it to the Death Star if I wish... the good one, not the wimpy Mk. 1. OTOH, I'll say I think it should be compared to whatever formation it's role is most similar to. Which would seem to be a light battalion that's sneaked into a mech battalion's motor pool. But that's just absurd, because who would want to sneak into the Stryker's motor pool and steal all their vehicles? If a light battalion did then _it_ would become a Stryker battalion, and a mech bat. wouldn't. Get a grip, man! From RMC: And compared to the power of the Force even a mech. battalion is as nothing! ("Star Wars" references courtesy of geekoutreach.com.) I think it's important to think of Stryker groups as souped up light formations with a lot of punch and speed. But used like a light formation. An "apples to apples" sort of comparison. They don't have the raw power or "toughness" (robustness? Imabigtankness?) of a mech formation. Hmm... maybe a good way to put it is that the Strykers make for a light battalion with a lot of punch, or an anemic mech. battalion. So deploy it as a light battalion and you'll probably make short work of the enemy. Apply it as a mech battalion and you'll be in trouble. Not that I'm trying to give you _military_ advice. Just rhetorical.

I agree with that. It's the possibility of such a game that made me leary of modern settings. I think the whole point of going with a fictional setting is that BFC can tweak it to maximize the opportunity for the sort of fighting they think it'll be fun to game. (Well, the most fun for the most people - you can't please everyone all the time. Not without lying.)

One MGS per platoon? Theoretically, at least. Woza! (And I mean that in a good way.) How many ATGM vehicles in that company?.. oh, I suppose I can go look that up. I just wanted to say "woza", really...

The game needs to reflect the soldier's point of view, which I gather is generally rather different. I'm not a soldier. However, it's my understanding that one of the reasons they're so good at going forward is that they know, come what may, that they'll be going back.

This being a sci-fi game, I'm hoping for such indirect capabilities "He said/She said" bombs, and munitions types like "May I go boom?", "I must say, you're all dead.". And the way I figure it, the Artillery Tables Guild will, along with the Space Vikings and the planetary governments, be one of the main powers maintaining the Great Convention in Rim space. Obey Guild Law, or lose your ability to wage war! (This is my entry in this week's "Most Obscure Post" contest.)

Just a couple more comments: And note the Bad Guys often still can't hit anything at that range. What gets me is the space-based weapons that don't seem to have a range much greater than 600 feet. There's a lot to be said for Buck Rogers GI in Space. As a game. I expect more from a book. I wish for more - but expect less - from a movie. Think of it, perhaps, as pushing current trends to an illogical extreme. The familiar... but with a fun sci-fi twist. I'm very much looking forward to a sci-fi game (even if it's space opera) that still takes realism seriously.

I think Peter Cairns is fundamentally correct, in that warfare in the distant future - as distant as DropTeam's - will most likely be very different from current warfare. Much more different than DropTeam's, IMO. But that's just "most likely". First, looking at the history supplied: The Traders supplying arms to the Rim worlds wouldn't necessarily have supplied the best or most advanced weapons. Ease of maintenance, political considerations, legal restrictions - or just profit margins - could have greatly limited what the Rim warlords had to play with. The Rim lost it's fight with the big E. despite it's much lauded experience - maybe because it didn't have enough of those things that'd make future warfare so different. Now, with the Space Vikings (I have to admit it took a bit of effort to type "Space Vikings" with a straight face) relying primarily on old LiveShip production facilities (IIRC) the game DropTeam will be fought without those most-advanced systems. And the available units - lo and behold - are primarily "sci-fi" versions of units familiar to us from Real Life. Secondly, there's the question of countermeasures. Why not use nano-based "grey goo", self-organizing fleets of UAVs, or all sorts of super-high tech sci-fi devices? Maybe it's because of counter-measures. Anti-goo goo, computer viruses, super-duper ECM, I dunno... but for some reason most "super weapons" don't work due to counter-measures kept on hand by everybody in the DropTeam universe. Everyone just deploys the stuff that can't be easily countered. In the case of DropTeam what's left looks a lot like upgraded versions of today's stuff... Or maybe it's a question of scale: The armor, or ECM equipment, or power sources, or whatever required to function on the battlefield just don't scale down well. So we've got tanks, but none of those very tiny, very smart and excessively lethal weapons systems that seem likely to make the future battlefield so different from today's. (Actually, I think it'd be interesting if the war of the E. against the Rim mentioned in the history featured the E. using plenty of super-sci-fi type weaponry... like say a dozen troopers that appear to be wearing light armor and carrying wands assaulting a city held by a battalion-sized Rim force of "advanced" AFVs.)

I suspect a withdrawal will count as a crushing defeat in most scenarios.

Give us the high sign when it arrives, so interested parties can start bitterly complaining about the change and the betrayal of all things CM it signifies. Thanx!

For those who've wondered, this is why there are no Six Day War or Yom Kippur War wargames or scenarios. ( )

The essential innovation you're missing is that it will be SMS text-message capable. Inf:"ied! ruok" Tnk:"..." I:"RUOK!" T:"..." I:"ruok! pcm!" T:"LOL! pwnd!" I:"WFT!" T:"ROTFL! j4f. kc. imho RPG. gr8 in hr!" I:"iou itys" T:"hak ttyl"

Hmm... I was hoping for WWII. Speculating about CMx2, modern didn't appeal. I was hoping for Burma. (Futilely, I know, but that's hope for you.) And yet... When I thought about modern or near-future settings what always came to mind was some massive Fulda Gap style tank battle, or a GWI "turkey shoot" sort of situation. Nice toys, but not something generally I find appealing to game. And what I liked about the WWII in the East was the thought of playing CM games in nasty conditions against a foe using guerllia-style tactics. But a Stryker formation? Hey! And Irregulars? Guerilla warfare? MOUT? More sophisticated victory conditions? Excellent! That's the sort of thing I was hoping for in a CBI/pacific CM - but better. So for me it looks like CM:SF is exactly what I was hoping for, so far as the style of warfare/gameplay goes. But with wholly new toys to play with, too. Maybe what I really wanted was a change of pace... CM:SF should be just that. Yippie! And yet more WWII a little latter. What's not to like?

Not at all... depends on just how you're judging it. Sounds like the show did pull a bait and switch, though. It'd be interesting to take an onion-layer sort of approach to the question. Start at equal-numbers very basic tactical match-up between tanks, and then start bringing in things things like communications and ease-of-use, and then move in to logistical and transport concerns, and finally the equipment's actual role on the battlefield. (The final thing, for example, might take into account just how often Shermans were required to go up against Tigers, as opposed to giving lesser-foes a hard time.) Oh... and just what flavor of Sherman they were talking about. The final Shermans were very nice tanks, while I think the early ones suffered somewhat from the "just good enough" philosophy that afflicted lots of early tanks. Lordy. Well, if it was multi-player you had a VERY happy opponent.

Safety pins? Anyway, he was at the storehouse because he'd run out of ammo from wandering around and eliminating enemy MG nests earlier. Sometimes those Rambo flicks don't seem all that far fetched: MOH - Charles E. Kelly

Last I heard they had some really impressive plans for AI. Something about "memory", for one thing. But my mole at the BFC turned up floating face down in the Danube several months ago, a steel spike in his back. So what do I know? Maybe thier plans have changed.

Is "Curved" handled differently for different AFVs in CMBB? A 60 degree slope on a T-34 is obviously going to be the same 60 degrees on a Hetzer (or some vehicle with a 60 d. slope)... but is the Curved on the front of a T-34 the same as the Curved on the front of a Stug?

I thought I saw something about BFC working to reduce the "Borg" effect on Windows version of the new engine by having the game administer painful and disorienting electric shocks to the player? I can't find the thread now, though. Apparently it's a fairly minor tweak to the MS code...

In that case this argument is finished, AFAIconcerned. Does that mean it's complete in every way? No, it means that I think that continuing is impractical, and that I will not be participating any more. You, of course, will maintain that I'm _not_ "finished".

As a friend of mine once said when on the looosing end of an argument "They're just words, they don't mean anything!" Feel free to reframe your argument. "Negligently incomplete"? "Rough and unpolished"?

I just looked - you're wrong, he's right.

That's a testable hypothesis, you know. Start a thread stating that you'll be doing things differently next time, and see what happens. I think it comes down to positive attitude vrs. negative attitude: Positive: Yea! Even if we don't have the models we get even MORE units! Negative: Boo! We don't have the models for all of the units! And the key to having a positive attitude is having a resonable sense of perspective: This is going to get technical.... The game already has LOTS of AFVs. Not "a few", not "some", but "LOTS". I counted, and it was LOTS. "LOTS - a few models = a great game", not an incomplete game. I think, btw, that "Whaaa! My fav. unit doesn't have a model!" is a resonable position.... but not "Whaaa! My fav. unit doesn't have a model! This is a notworthy, even serious, probelm!"

Slide rule haters, of course. Every few months another one appears, talking about the wonders of the latest IBM hole-punch machine, a smaller Babbage-engine, or whatever. [ February 06, 2003, 05:49 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

Yes. You have an irrational hatred of slide rules. Frankly, your kind isn't wanted here.